The former Valencian president Eduardo Zaplana affirms that the Valencian Language Academy (AVL), an entity he created in 1998, continues to be the best instrument to standardize Valencian and to maintain the philological consensus on the language. In a telephone conversation yesterday with La Vanguardia, Zaplana recalls that thanks to the AVL it was not only possible to “pacify a conflict that was very present in society”, but that the debate about the Valencian was removed “from the political sphere to confine it to the academic field”. The Valencian institution, integrated into the Statute, defines Valencian as a “Romance language spoken in the Valencian Community” and in other geographies, such as Catalonia or the Balearic Islands, “where it is called Catalan”.
Recently, voices from conservative sectors have once again questioned the validity of the Valencian Academy as a regulatory body for the Valencian language. This body was created when the PP depended on the Valencian Union in the institutions, and was unanimously approved in the Valencian Courts with the unanimous support of the media. At the head of the first Academy was the poet Xavier Casp, and of the second, Ascención Figueres. Zaplana, who faces trial in the Erial case in January, recalls “the countless meetings” he held with university academics “from all sectors, those who were in favor of the unity of Catalan and Valencian and those who they were against it, but in the end we reached a consensus that has allowed years of peace in the language issue”. “My initial goal was not so much that they agree, but simply to sit everyone at the same table to talk, and that was the beginning of success”, he says.
The former Valencian president also emphasizes that “the initiative was mine and mine alone, no one else’s, neither Jordi Pujol nor José María Aznar; the one who had the problem and the one who wanted to solve it was me and I succeeded”. “Pujol, with whom I maintain a good relationship, what he did do was applaud the creation of the AVL”, he adds. “In those days the PSOE did not collaborate, it did not know how to be in the process, and I had to work alone with many people to create the AVL”, he comments.
The former president makes it clear that “now the difference is that the language problem is no longer in the streets, but it is in politics”. And he warns that “it is not good to discuss again something that should be left to those who have the ability to address it, which are the academics”. He also emphasizes that the AVL “does not say where Valencian should be taught, in which geographical areas, that depends on the Ministry of Education; some say to eliminate the academy because they confuse things, what decides what is taught and where the ministry is, is politics, the academy is a regulatory body”.
